


We take this Second Chance

by FortunesArkHero



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Deserved Better, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Eventual Smut, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), POV Ben Solo, POV Rey (Star Wars), Post-Canon Fix-It, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, Reylo - Freeform, Slow Burn Rey/Kylo Ren, Soft Ben Solo, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Time Travel Fix-It, Virgin Ben Solo, Virgin Rey (Star Wars), feral sand goblin rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:29:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23438482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortunesArkHero/pseuds/FortunesArkHero
Summary: He was ready for the end... though not so much what came after. Or before? It was hard to understand the difference at this point.Beyond the veil of death through trials and mistakes he tried to redeem himself for, Ben Solo found himself thrown into a time when things began to fall apart. Saved from a persistent junker, the young woman he'd come to know as enemy turned ally and now savior faced him once more.Was this his mind lost in the Force, trying to rewrite a long life of regrets and transgressions to make himself be at peace?Or was this another go around in a sequence of events that he could change for the better?OR, in which the Force is not done with the Dyad and sends Ben Solo to Jakku a year before his death where he is found and cared for by Rey.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 51
Kudos: 119





	We take this Second Chance

**Author's Note:**

> In the words of old Obi-wan Kenobi, hello there!
> 
> Like a lot of us, I felt absolutely heartbroken that Rey and Ben, a literal pair of soulmates, had been robbed of a well deserved happy ever after, and like a lot of us, I felt the need to give them one of my own that felt right. This story was heavily inspired by the tumblr user galacticidiots describing the perfect time travel AU: Ben remembers fading away on Exegol, but instead of it being BB-8, he is found by our favorite feral sand goblin Rey while she was still living on Jakku.
> 
> Your comments and kudos are the coffee that will keep the thought train a-going. Especially while we are all supposed to be locked up inside our homes.
> 
> I wanted to take my time with this. I hadn't posted in a long time, thought i had lost my love of writing, but my boyfriend sat me down and helped me with some writing exercises and I am actually really proud of how this started out.  
> I would love to hear what you all think while I try and keep going with it.

Flight helmet on her head and rations plated in her lap, Rey looked out from the defunct durasteel scrap heap that was once an Imperial AT-AT Walker. As with every day, she eyed the skies, on watch for someone’s return. 

  
Someone left her here… and they would come back…

...at least that’s what she held onto as a belief, the faith in that ideal slipping further from her mind day after day. 

The routine held firm though, despite her faith, leading to the fear of change that could cause her to miss what might happen. 

A yelp drew her attention and jarred the young woman from her thoughts. Dropping the helmet, Rey bolted atop the AT-AT to find her staff, gripping it tightly in her hands as another yelp, one that sounded too much like a horribly wounded animal was followed by a mixture of garbled shrieks and the creaking of old metal. It was against her better judgment, against that intuition that had trickled into the back of her mind that had always kept her surviving whatever dangers and troubles Jakku had cruelly thrown at her as she made her way over the small dune. She heard the garbled shrieks again, her brows knitted together and nose scrunched up in disgust. She _knew_ what was going to be waiting for her over that dune and stopped when she found that her intuition proved correct.

The Teedo was perched on its luggabeast, shrieking a slew of curses at a crumpled black lump that struggled far too weakly in its net but still struggled just enough to earn another jab with the creature’s ionization spear. Something struck deep within Rey’s chest when the Teedo stunned the lump on the ground, causing whatever the creature had scavenged to give a strangled cry of pain. Her lips parted, exhaling a shaky breath as her eyes looked at nothing but what she had assumed now was not a glorious haul of parts or that of a functioning droid. She bared her teeth as her lips trembled with anger, her grip on her staff tightened as her knuckles turned white. 

She saw it there and her heart clenched at the sight: the matted, sweat-soaked black hair that stuck against a face bruised and streaked with blood both dried and new. The most concerning, what really made an angered hitch of breath catch in her throat as her eyes trailed down, was the way the right leg looked so twisted and so broken she was sure it would take months, maybe even a full standard year to heal properly. 

There was a human trapped in Teedo’s net, one that Rey knew wouldn’t be able to fight off being sold to work as a scavenger under Unkar Plutt. To be forced as an indentured slave until the sands of Jakku became their graveyard. To suffer the same life as she had been made to suffer.

No. No, that was _not_ going to happen. She would damn every star in the galaxy if it did.

“ _Tal’ama parqual_!”

Teedo snapped its gaze away from its captive, peering at Rey through its dirty goggles. It gave another garbled shriek in her direction as it pointed a stubby wrapped finger at her, its voice mechanical in thanks to the mouthpiece she knew its species used to filter and recycle the water in their bodies to keep them alive in the Jakku desert. “ _Parqual! Zatana tappan-aboo!”_ The luggabeast gave a low groan, agitated by the growing animosity between the desert-dwellers. The Teedo took notice and grabbed the makeshift reins around the beast’s neck, hoping to take its prize away. The Teedo also took notice that its captured prize would _not_ stop trying to fight, struggling with ragged and pained gasps as they tried to break free from the net. With another jab of the spear, Teedo stunned the human and they collapsed back into the netting.

The decision was easily made for her. Rey slid down the dune, pulling her staff over her shoulder and withdrawing a small knife she had always securely hidden at her hip. “ _Namago_ ,” she growled at the tightly clothed creature. “ _Ta bana contoqual_!” She had dealt with Teedo’s kind too many times to keep a true count during her years on Jakku. She had lost a few weeks worth of portions in the form of old Imperial TIE fighter parts to a group of them as a child, and Plutt had let her go hungry for almost 3 days as punishment. A small rage began to build in her as she tried to safely hack an opening with her knife, careful not to harm the stranger, a human _male_ Rey noticed when she was able to look closer. 

She ignored the Teedo’s shrieking cries of indigenous invectives unleashed toward her as she continued to cut away at the mesh. After a moment, the netting finally gave away, allowing her to start maneuvering the man from his roped prison as the Teedo gave one final curse, a slur toward Rey that would have been vile in any language across the galaxy to hear. She paused angrily, her blood now hot like a live wire in a wrecked ship. She stood with her knife in hand pointed in defiance at the grubby little reptile. “ _Noma. Ano tamata, zatana._ ” She bent back down to the stranger, now determined more than ever to free him. Out of the corner of her vision, Rey caught sight of the creature attempting to raise the spear. Before the Teedo could bring down the weapon on either one of them to make off with the man, Rey quickly hooked her hands under his arms and around his torso and she _pulled_. His foot just barely missed being stabbed by the tip of the spear as they tumbled back and rolled into the sand. With one last defiant and angry cry, Teedo threw the same slur at Rey, a mistake now that she would make sure he came to regret. 

With the knife sheathed back at her hip and her staff gripped in her hands, Rey went up to the creature and its beast. In one fluid motion, she kicked the ionization spear free from the Teedo’s grasp, the weapon landing in the sand with a thud. The creature distracted, she used the blunt end of her staff and jabbed it in its torso, causing it to cry out with new curses in Teedospeak. With any luck, she had hit it hard enough to have cracked a few ribs. This Teedo, if it did not make it back to its clan, she knew would be claimed by the desert and forgotten like everything else that had died within the sands. As Teedo pressed a three fingered hand—or claw, really— to its damaged body, it used its other hand to grab the reins of its metal-enclosed beast and gave it a sharp tug. 

The Teedo had lost. It knew it had. And Rey would be lying if she said she hadn’t felt the slight satisfaction of knowing that she may have deprived it and its clan of a hefty worth of portions if they were indeed going to end up subjecting this man to the cruel reality of Jakku in the way they wanted.

With the disgusting little reptile and its beast to be what she considered a safe distance away, Rey acted quickly, dropping to her knees in the sand to gather the tattered remains of the Teedo’s discarded net before launching herself in full flight toward the stranger. He had not moved in the slightest since she had freed him; if it weren’t for the raspy pained breaths following the ever so slight trembles of his chest, Rey might’ve thought him dead already. She needed to get him inside the AT-AT, out of an environment that she knew in his current state, he would not survive alone. She gave a quick glance over her shoulder, the light of the sun dipping behind the dunes quicker than she would have liked. Jakku was dangerous in the daytime, sure, but only a fool had dared to brave the desert wastelands when it was blanketed in the thick darkness of night. Those that tried never saw another sunrise again.

Rey may have been young, but she was no fool.

***

It took her what remained of Jakku’s evening light, but with the Teedo’s net acting as a makeshift harness, Rey had managed to drag her rescue the small trek back to the AT-AT. Getting him inside was a bit difficult, if she were being honest with herself. She feared that every step she had to take with him would shatter him anew, but she pressed forward with steady breaths. She had taken down the hammock she suspended in the corner, splaying it out on the ground as neat as she could to try and make it as close to a bed as possible for him. It was a thing she had woven by hand when she had learned the craft, and she hoped her other skills would be just enough to keep him alive while he tried to heal.

The harness had been tossed back outside the AT-AT, Rey had set to work to get him out of the ropes the moment she was able to safely get him inside. It also made her worry how very little, if at all, the man had moved since everything had happened. His breathing still came out choked and ragged when she pressed her ear near his lips. She knew very well that the deep colors of black, blue, and purple that marred the left side of his torso from what she could see beneath the torn fabric of his tunic meant that he had suffered some broken ribs. Stars only knows how long his ribs had gone unchecked before she had gotten a hold of him. 

With gentle yet practiced hands, Rey was able to pull the man toward what was effectively his new bed for the time being. She had folded the thin sheet she used for a blanket to act as his pillow, knowing that there was a much more effective spare blanket around somewhere that she could use for him later when the time came to dress his wounds. She had her right hand cradling the back of his head, fingers unintentionally twirled into his sweaty but surprisingly soft black hair. With her left hand, she held a firm grasp at what appeared to be his uninjured right side, and as though she were caring for a newborn, she helped to lower him on his back against the pallet. 

She didn’t catch what she had done at first, but giving him a slight once over after getting him down on his back afforded her the awareness that she had gone and clasped his right hand with her left. Her right hand slowly crept up from his head to his face, resting it against his bruised and bloodied left cheek. Her thumb began to rub soothing lines back and forth over his skin, her breath catching in her throat thinking that maybe even the slightest of gentle touches may get him to stir. 

As if he had read her thoughts, the man’s eyes began to flicker wildly behind sallow lids, brows etched together in pain as he blearily revealed the most beautiful pair of exhausted —and if she were being completely honest, _haunting_ — onyx orbs Rey had ever seen on a human. She started to caress his cheek once more, almost a gentle way to try and help focus his gaze on her. Though she feared in his lackluster state, he would not be able to comprehend much. He tried to pull in a shaky breath between slightly parted lips, his bottom lip she had only now realized was badly split. The effort to even _breathe_ was too much for him, his body seizing up in Rey’s embrace as a violent cough tore through his already fragile being.

“Shh, shh, I’ve got you,” she cooed, her right hand abandoned his cheek in favor of cradling his head once more, fearful that he may injure himself in any further coughing fits on the metal beneath him.

Rey could tell he tried to keep his eyes open, but even that was using what little energy he had regained. She felt him try to tighten his grasp on her hand, and she couldn’t help the lone tear that slipped free from the corner of her eye. He was so _broken_ , and _very_ lucky to be alive.

It was right then and there that Rey had deemed him to be a fighter.

“I’ve got you,” she soothed again. She couldn’t stop the small smile that cracked at her lips. “Don’t be afraid. You’re not alone.”

His grip on her hand tightened so suddenly, Rey feared he was going to suffer another cough, but his body remained calm. She looked at him then, _really_ looked at him; he was giving her a smile, a toothy grin that the moment portrayed him with the illusion that he looked more of a boy than a man.

“ _Rey,_ ” he breathed, weakly.

Her brows furrowed in confusion, her hand still grasped in his like a lifeline as she watched his smile falter completely and his eyes roll into the back of his head.

**Author's Note:**

> I promise they will be happy, but they're gonna suffer in star wars fashion while it happens :)


End file.
